By tapping into classic concepts yet constantly adding
new ideas and refinements, Godin Guitars has
grown into one of the largest manufacturers in North
America over the last 40 years. With an annual production
of 175,000 instruments across its six guitar
brands—Godin, Seagull, Simon & Patrick, Art &
Lutherie, Norman, and La Patrie—the company is
most decidedly not a small guitar maker. Certainly not
when compared to solitary luthiers toiling away in basements,
attics, and backyard shops. Yet the company
retains a smaller, more boutique feel as a result of its
constant striving for innovation, improvement, and
responsiveness to player needs. And those characteristics
are a direct reflection of founder Robert Godin’s personal
attitude toward instrument experimentation.

6-Point Buck or 6-String Factory?
In the early 1960s, amateur guitarists everywhere
were struggling to replicate the sounds
they heard on records. Among them was a
15-year-old Canadian named Robert Godin.
Like many others, he was fascinated by the
tones of the Ventures and the Beatles, but he
found the majority of instruments available
to him weren’t suited to those styles. While
working at Harmony Lab, a Montreal music
store, Godin began experimenting with different
string gauges, employing banjo strings on
guitars, and modifying other instrument components.
His innovations garnered praise and
word-of-mouth testimonials amongst local
guitar players. Gradually, that fan base grew to
musicians from cities all across Canada.

“He ended up becoming the place [to get
mods],” says Mario Biferali, sales and marketing
manager at Godin Guitars. “He had
people coming from as far away as Toronto
and Quebec City. Toronto is, like, five hours
away! People talked, ‘Oh, there’s a place to
go … he’ll make that guitar scream.’”

Godin acquired a Conn Strobotuner, a
gadget that he feels was the first in Canada,
and that one purchase led to a major career
realization for the young luthier.

“In the old days, tuners were the size of
a refrigerator and cost thousands of dollars,”
says Robert Godin—still president of the
company that bears his name. “I was doing
intonations on guitars and realized that guitars
needed many modifications to get the
sound I was looking for. That’s what really
got me started on my dream of creating a
guitar truly built with the player in mind.”

On a hunting trip in 1972, Godin came
across the factory for Norman Windows—a
wooden-frame window manufacturer that,
strangely enough, also dabbled in guitars.
Norman’s 6-string efforts had been disappointing,
but Godin became convinced he
could improve the instruments. Shortly after
returning home from his travels, he solidified
plans to take over the factory and focus
on building the guitars of his dreams.

“Everyone else on the hunting trip came
home with a deer,” Godin joked in a 2011
interview with Music Trades. “I came home
with a guitar factory.” To this day, the
Norman guitar line still honors the window-manufacturing
facility where it all started.

In It to Innovate
As you’d expect, those early years were challenging
for Godin as he loaded up a van and began crisscrossing Canada in an effort to
establish personal relationships with guitar
stores. It didn’t help that some of his ideas
were kind of out-there. In fact, from the
beginning, many of Godin’s designs have
been unusual enough that the average player
expecting traditional appointments and
construction needed to have the concept
explained in order to fully appreciate it.
For example, one of Godin’s earliest breakthroughs—using thinner finishes so that his
instruments sounded and felt livelier—was
so simple that it’s a no-brainer by today’s
standards. But back then, most instruments
featured a heavy, shiny finish that seemed to
prioritize looks over tones.

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